


it does not become me

by Spei (Sleepmarshes)



Category: Journey (Video Game 2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gratuitous Worldbuilding, Original Characters - Freeform, true to game (ish)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-02 08:51:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10941096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepmarshes/pseuds/Spei
Summary: "...we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us..."She’d only seen the mountain once. But when you found her in the dunes, crying beneath a smoking, singed mask, she’d traced half the hymns already with her bleeding fingers in the sand.A story of a changing tide.





	1. why have you come to me here, dear heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The traveler Nai'ja completes her journey alone. T'vor finds her in the sands behind his home, and becomes her apprentice.

Looking back on it, the way she spoke of her master had always held a quiet note of longing. You wonder why it had required confluence with dead ancestors for you to only hear it now.

“Va’shti shone beautifully, a moth in moonlight,” she says, carefully mending a fraying end of her scarf by the fire. Her mask, tilted up for the evening’s meal, reveals the bottom of her face, and you catch the rare sight of her mouth curved into a quiet smile. 

You don't know what to say, but are desperate to hear anything Nai’ja will give, and so ask: “How many times did she see the mountain?”

She turns to you, her gaze still in shadow from the mask. Her lips are the hue of a morning sun blushing on the sands. “I didn’t ask,” she says, that note in her voice once again. Her master had been taken by the steel wyrms, lost in a storm.

Nai'ja still keeps a faded, white scrap of Va'sthi's robes, tucked underneath her hood.

* * *

 

You’ve been taught that the deep red of your own robes signified something sacred. A red j’nier was ordained by stars, their cloak the color of blood, of life, of the beating heart. Its fabric protects you from winds and sands, from the sun's harsh rays and, so you’re told, the bitter cold of the mountain.

You can't imagine something like that. You were born in the desert-- the coldest thing you’ve ever touched was a shard of a rusting wyrm you found in the dunes, somehow more chill in the night than the sands around it. But Nai’ja says the mountain is so unlike the desert that water becomes a stone, that the snow is so blinding white the splendor of Va'shti's robes had been outshone, erased.

Your master’s robes are still red, like yours, but hers have hundreds of glyphs embroidered around the hem, the things she’s learned gilded in gold thread. She is but two hymns from her ascension ceremony. You suspect she already knows them by heart, but, for some reason, denies them and the white cloak she would earn.

A traveler in white is the greatest gift from the stars, the robes given to the servants of heaven who few and far between were as knowledgeable and pure. A j’nier must reach the mountain to hear even a single hymn, but those with white robes have touched its light dozens of times. After years of journeying, meditating on the hymns, and stitching their glyphs into their red robes, the blood is washed away by the mountain, leaving behind only songs and grace.

Nai’ja is different, though. She’d only seen the mountain once. But when you found her in the dunes, crying beneath a smoking, singed mask, she’d traced half the hymns already with her bleeding fingers in the sand.

To know so many after one touch is more than unprecedented-- it was the stuff of ill omens and black moons. 'Bypassing the stars,' the village said, the same folly of the ancients who forsook the journey, building the machines for power that led the world to destruction. She was side-stepped by your tribe, many warding against her, but because her cloak was red, your father allowed you to bring her inside and give her the golden thread so she may stitch the hymns and find peace.

The village disapproved further still when you begged to be taken on as her apprentice. You had argued with the council for days, and still she kept stitching. They relented only because no robes are as deep a red as yours, and there were no other travelers to be had, unpaired or otherwise. And when you finally had their blessing, still she kept stitching.

It took her three moons to gild them, and when there were only two blank lines left in her cloak, she finally came to herself, looking around your small home to see you for the first time. She quietly asked your name in a voice that nearly sounded like a song on its own.

You bowed, as is custom to anyone who falls from the mountain. “T’vor, your grace.”

“I am not.”

“What?”

“I am nothing graceful. I am Nai'ja. Whose lands are these?”

* * *

 

The series of notes for your tribe are bound to 'Those Protecting The Desert Jewel'. As a child, before you were given your robes, you’d asked the tribe head Jiren’al what the jewel actually is. He’d said it was something the whitecloaks believed in-- a heart in sand, a spark in darkness-- something that, long ago, had given the ancient ones hope when their sons and daughters went silent.

“I know not what it is, nephew," said Jiren'al. "I pray we never need find it, that we should be so lost in despair it would require our seeing. Whatever its form, it lives in the sand, and so we protect these lands should the steel wyrms ever return.” 

* * *

 

You don't know anything about the steel wyrms other than the tarnished carcasses you sometimes found in the west, but you think despair had already made its home in your tribe without them. The people age and wither, looking to the west for something that never comes. The mountain only rarely spat sparks by the time you came of age, and none of the travelers from your village had ever returned.

When you were called into the diviner’s home, and put your hands in the great basin of water and dye to grab your designated robes, you had expected the drab brown of a normal villager, or perhaps the faded blue of a trader. Instead came blood, staining up to your elbows as your robes came from the murky water in a red so dark and harrowing it looked black.

Your father wept-- it is both an honor and a stab to the heart for him-- as his partner, your mother, had not returned when she sought the mountain.

Jiren’al told you, “Such a deep red will make your hymns like flame.”

And so you studied the scrolls, learning what you could of the old tales. You meditated on the dunes, for months, for years, hoping for some note on the wind to tell you when and where to go, but you never once felt like a j’nier. You could divine no reason why the stars would appoint this task to you when you weren’t much for faith and gods to begin with.

But one night, while trying to listen to the wind yet only hearing the uneasy thump of your heart, the mountain spat a twisting spark into the dark sky. Breath tangling in your ribs, you stumbled upright in the sand, watching as that burning star grew larger, closer, closer, _nearly upon you_ , _perhaps this is how you will die, before you’ve even left the village--_

It passed overhead, bright filaments crackling off its edges as it disappeared over the ridge of another dune.

As you slid down a steep slope to find it, you distinctly remember how it shrieked a beautiful, terrible song.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i guess it's my directive to arrive five years late and crown myself edgelord of barren lands
> 
> this is a love story, i think. though of more than one kind.


	2. we will never be here again

You’ve never seen her eyes. Granted, one should only see the eyes of their lover, and that may be why you’re so tempted to look in the first place. Because you think you’ve loved her the moment the mountain threw her back to the desert, next to the only flower you’ve ever seen in your life.

It was a yellow flower, facing the light coming off the mountain, but also facing Nai’ja, its petals a quiet witness over the runes she’d written in blood. Your father hadn’t believed you-- no one in the tribe has seen flowers in living memory-- but there were more important matters at hand, the traveler still bleeding and raving with songs.

* * *

 

She was born to Those Who Weave Moonlight, a tribe south and east from your home. It is a place filled with whitecloaks who left scrolls of their travels to be copied, picking up stray j'niers as apprentices before leaving. It was also the best village to have one’s scarf mended, as the residents are adept at manipulating pockets of light and weaving them like threads.

You suggest returning to her home before continuing on your journey, but she had declined, deeming it out of the way.

“There’s nothing left for me there,” she adds before folding her legs under her to meditate. Her mask tilts to the night sky. "The moon is prettier out here, anyway."

She recites a quiet fragment of a hymn you've never heard; you wonder if anyone has.

There are more songs than any one j'nier can memorize; some are rare, others as common as a lullaby, and the few you've heard Nai'ja sing are so archaic that surely only the eldest villagers stood a chance of knowing them.

You’ve grown convinced that she is the jewel of the desert, and you think your robes had been given to you so that you may be at her side, living the name of your tribe. You will never tell her this-- she reminds you often that all travelers are chosen for the biggest story of all, that no single one is more important than another. But you feel you would protect her with your life, and you’re certain she would not appreciate it.

Using a glowing font of light she’d found among scattered ruins, you continue to weave its magic into your stumpy scarf like she'd taught you, working the pattern to the sound of her voice. Your work is messy and crude, yet you find yourself a little proud of it too; to see it come into being, glowing like a moon, finally makes it feel like you might be a j’nier, too.

The pattern you weave seems to pulse, coming alive when Nai’ja gives up meditation and steps close. “You have clever fingers, T’vor,” she remarks. Though her hands have healed since her decent, when she reaches to touch your scarf you find yourself inspecting them carefully in habit.

“I only know anything from watching you,” you reply. Would that you could convey how her voice and form and grace enchants you, how you’d like to tilt up her mask and hear her sing directly into your ear in the darkness.

But she does not hear you. “Then you too are learning from Va’shti,” she says, her voice wounding you with its distance.

* * *

 

You’re met with a sandstorm at the end of the dunes. The form of a great tower stands in its center, as if it had borne the storm, itself. The tower grinds and whirs, and the only thing to which you can compare the sound is the cracking of bones, but much louder, as if they are the breaking limbs of a god thundering across the desert.

The sands jump under your feet with every crash, your stomach twisting anxiously in your gut. Nai’ja looks on, her mask still as glass, though her long scarf whips in the winds like the angry tail of a beast. 

Her voice is eerily discordant against the screeching of old automatons. “This is a hateful thing. But something calls you to the top. Do you hear it?”

All you hear is a cacophony, and you tell her as much.

Your master's mask turns to you, eye holes regarding you in a way that makes you feel both small and excited. You tense when she reaches over. “You lie to yourself,” she says, voice gentler now. Nai'ja pulls the end of your short scarf and brings it to your shoulder for you to see. “Some part of you will hear it if you would stop using your ears.”

You’re startled to find that although your master’s lovely scarf is dull as any piece of cloth, the one glyph on your own glows.

* * *

 

Nai’ja teaches you the way she was taught, which is to say she lets you stumble about like an idiot for a time until you’re frustrated and ready to combust. And then she’ll take one step in the right direction, leading with a touch or a note or a blank look over her shoulder, until you see what you are meant to do.

High above where she stands, you see the trapped sandglider struggling to escape the bars of a tower window. You're not certain saving creatures are part of your journey, but regardless, you make your way towards it, scaling the crumbling tower to help set it free because it reminds you of your robes. Your grip on the building is precarious-- the loud gnashing of machines inside shakes the walls and threatens to knock you back to the ground, which... is a lot further down than you remember it being.

Nai’ja watches you from below, her confidence in you so tangible that you can _almost_ believe her.

Nearing the window, you hear the telltale snapping of ripping fabric, and you double your efforts. Sandgliders, like all moonthread creatures, respond best to song, but the only thing you can manage to remember while clinging to the side of an automaton building and terrified of falling, is the note for your name. 

Your note, the first one you called when you were born, was the pitch for ‘diligent flame’. It’s a common one, for a common villager in a dusty, nondescript desert, and your mother bound it to your name, something equal parts short and unassuming.

Eager to calm the thing before it rips itself to shreds, you call out to the sandglider, your note resonating from within and pitched to reach the creature’s threads. It stills for a moment before echoing a return, at first hesitant, but then with renewed vigor, struggling against the barred window.

“ _Be still!_ ” you urge through the storm's winds, and you’re surprised to see it obey; it’s become attuned to your voice, clicking and whining with impatience. You edge closer, hugging the smooth face of the building to reach the window’s ledge. The metal bars on the window are deceptively sharp, but they are your only handhold. Besides, you hardly notice-- despite the bone-shaking noise from within the tower, the only thing you’re aware of now is the sound of billowing cloth. 

To both your amazement and horror, behind the window are hundreds of moonthread wisps and sandgliders, held captive by this awful construct for a regime that no longer exists. Without much thought, you call to these too. Time seems to stop when the creatures halt and stiffen, but then they surge towards you, pinpointing the bars and bending the metal with sheer force. Your ears are filled with more ripping and tearing, but the moonthreads are all soon free, and even as you are blown away from the window like the gods are breathing through you, you feel a split second of relief for them.

But then you are plummeting rapidly to the earth, shrieking in terror. **"Nai'ja!!"**

The wisps surround you in a roaring of flight, slowing your decent. You hear your note sung haphazardly, and hands appear beneath your arms, tugging you skyward once again.

At the top of the tower, Nai’ja steadies you on your feet, the glyphs in her robes luminous and humming. The freed creatures swirl about, holding the wind and sand at bay like the eye of a storm. Your master's small laugh is muffled behind her mask, but you will remember the sound of it until your body becomes dust.

She says, “I suppose I should have first taught you to fly.”

You find yourself laughing too, nervous sparks dancing in your blood. The trapped sandglider, one of its ribbons frayed and tattered, chirps and swims through the air around you both, echoing your name. And then, from behind Nai’ja, you see a statue the color of summer clouds.

Its shape is sleek, dignified. It beckons to you with a silence so deafening it's hard to believe you hadn't heard it all along.

 


	3. many a dark range of mountains

A silhouette looms before you, nearly lost in a storm of white. A hundred hymns filling you until you feel you will burst, you are appraised. The silhouette does not tell you your worth. 

It turns, looking longingly towards the west. It may not go there, but you can. 

You must.

Their wants were too great.

It tore them apart. We tore ourselves apart.

Deep in the sunken city, do not be tempted by its loveliness.

It will come for you as well. Diligent flame, fly ever forward to the mountain.

  
The figure's voice fades away, songs scattering like windswept whispers. The white of the storm blinds you, but for a single moment, you think you see the silhouette split violently in two.

* * *

 

Nai’ja does not hear you when you rise to your feet. Back turned, she sits on the tower’s edge, seated quietly among the wisps and gliders. They chirp to her, but she does not reply.

Her cloak is not as dark a red as yours, but beneath the wisps twisting around her, it seems to come alive, shadows shifting across her back like a beating heart. 

Hesitant, you call the note bound to her name. You think it is the pitch for ‘refuge’, though you haven’t formally asked. Nearby gliders repeat it until the hood of Nai’ja’s cloak tilts, her head cocked. She finally looks up and over her shoulder at you, her mask as blank as always.

She asks, “Where to?”

You glance at the statue behind you for a moment-- it is silent now in a way that feels merely empty. Turning back to your master, you ask, “Do you not need speak with it as well?”

Nai’ja stands, one hand parting her robes to reach up and absently stroke through the ribbons of a glider. “The only ones who call for me are these and you.”

Your gut does a little flip-- or perhaps it has been doing that since your mind mingled with the dead. “Oh.” You wonder if she had once spoken to the same silhouette on her previous journey, if its presence in her mind had made her feel as meager and helpless as a mote of dust.

You step closer to her, wanting to shorten the distance you perceive even if only physically. “I was warned about a sunken city, though it seems I am to go there, despite.”

Her hand falls. Shadows dance on her mask as she looks to the west, towards the light on the mountain. She nods only once, her scarf twisting at her feet. "Then we go."

* * *

 

You cling to a ruined archway, mocked by sandgliders and your master.

“This is surely death!” you shout, voice as high as a child’s.

Seated on a boulder further down the slope, Nai’ja leans back on her hands and laughs. “You are the first j’nier I’ve ever seen so afraid of falling. Look, your friend is having fun,” she says, pointing to the familiar, tattered sandglider trumpeting your note proudly as it prances down the steep sands.

You risk a look over the edge of the arch’s platform, nausea swimming up your throat at the sight of the sheer drop. “Those without bones to break have less to worry about,” you reply, tightening your hold on the arch and shutting your eyes.

“Flight really should have been the first lesson,” you hear Nai’ja mutter. You crack open an eye in time to watch her scarf glow, and she flutters effortlessly up the slope and back to you. With a determined puff of air sighed behind her mask, she holds out a hand.

You stare at this. Then back at her. At any other time, you would leap at the chance to touch her, but here you refuse. 

She is a patient teacher, though you think her patience isn't so much natural as it is a trait of her former master that she struggles to preserve-- at least when it comes to dealing with you. “Whatever it covers, a traveler’s robes will ward off almost any injury. The pull of the earth, the edge of a blade. Even... colliding into stone,” she says, her voice colored with amusement.

It is unfortunate your mask covers your scowl. “I caught this on purpose,” you say. Flexing your hands against the pillar, you test the pull of scabs on your palms, cut by the barred window you fell from. It's the only place you’ve drawn blood since your journey began. “’Almost’,” you repeat back, deep in thought. “What will it _not_ save me from?”

With a blitheness made false by an internal wound, she says, “Wyrms and regrets."

Her hand still waits for yours. Though a hundred questions are in your mouth, you don’t know how to respond. Nai’ja impatiently waggles her fingers, so you reluctantly release the arch and take her hand.

“Now listen, T’vor. Alone, your wings are only as long as you weave them,” she says, ignoring whatever weight her previous words had burdened the air. She reaches behind with her free hand to bring her scarf forward. Your fingers are squeezed, and you watch as the spent patterns in the fabric are reborn, coming alive. “But threaded creatures will help, if asked. And when _we_ are together, the sky is ours.”

Her skin is dry, but warm. Even when you carried her on your back, hauling her in from the dunes, you’ve never felt as close to her as you do here, right now.

“So. Just fly if you are afraid. Trust me, if nothing else.” 

When you squeeze her hand back, her grip tightens again in return, and your heart swells. “I do trust you, master,” you murmur.

You wish you could see the smile you hear in her voice when she says, “I will be beside you.”

And then you are _pushed._

* * *

 

“You gripped my scarf so tight you were practically a wyrm!” she calls from the remains of a bridge, so high above you her mask is nothing but a speck.

After skidding down the sands steep enough to be its own damned mountain, you had flown for a breathtaking moment before falling to the bottom of this strange valley, tumbling into the dunes.

As promised, your bones had not broken, but you think your trust in your master has frayed a bit. You sit up, shaking sand from your head and lifting your mask a bit so you can spit some from your gritty mouth. “What happened to ‘together’?”

“Well, get up here, then!” She stretches her arms above her head with a satisfied croon, the wind caressing her robes. You sigh, annoyed with mostly yourself for finding her captivating even at this distance. 

“How do you suggest I do that, exactly? You merely floated there on your way down while I screamed myself inside out!”

Peering over the edge of the bridge, she only replies, “The breeze up here is nice, T'vor.”

“I’m sure,” you mutter, groaning as you rise to your feet and begin exploring the ruins jutting out of the sands, a puzzle she thinks you can solve alone.

Airy as a feathered cloud, she says, “Ahh, I think I will take a nap.”

Flipping your mask back down, you are determined to make it the shortest nap she ever takes. 

* * *

 

 

She’ll sleep a hundred moons at this rate.

In all honesty, it’s for the best that she keeps her distance-- you must confer with the stray wisps in the valley to really grasp the nature of flying on your own, and to have her breathing down your neck while meeting rocks and rubble face-first a hundred times would have probably turned you off the idea.

But you do manage to make your way into a hollow in a sheer cliff, the tattered sandglider clicking for your attention from inside. You let out a gratified, _"Hah!"_ when you arrive, though not without stumbling over an altar beforehand.

Spirit markers hug the left and right edges of a blank wall, its empty seamlessness leaving an uneasy taste in your mouth. You’ve seen Nai’ja sing to one of these before, though it had shown her something only she could see, unresponsive to you.

The glider buzzes, curious, when you quietly hum to test the markers. Unlike last time, these glow at your voice, the mural they flank bursting into golden sparks. You take a startled step back, witness to a mosaic of lights. They burn an image that stills your heart.

You know those dunes like the back of your mask. Among their slopes is Those Protecting The Desert Jewel. And in the sky above your village is the harsh, familiar twist of a steel wyrm.

And atop the wyrm, commanding its power, stands Nai’ja.


	4. at one moment flame with life

Ill omens and black moons are things you’ve never paid any heed. With no indication of who it truly was, it could have been any redcloak in the world depicted on that wall.

Had you seen Nai’ja there because she’s the only one you’ve spoken with for weeks? Because she’s always at the forefront of your mind?

Perhaps you should be more focused on the fact that it was a traveler at all. Redcloaks are from your time, not of the ancestors--if the wyrms returned at the will of a rogue j’nier, all life would be defenseless. Your guts become knots when you imagine it.

You catch your breath on a cliff’s edge, the broken bridge a short distance above. The tattered sandglider hovers nearby, which has accompanied you the entire time you’ve been traversing the valley, freeing more wisps and gliders trapped in ancient cages. You need only fly a small ways to reach Nai’ja, but your scarf is spent.

Before you can ask the sandglider for assistance, your master calls your name. Looking up, you see her sprawled on the bridge above, one arm extended so you may take her hand.

You grasp the very tips of her fingers, gazing up to her mask. How had you been so certain it was your master on the wyrm? At her touch, your troubled thoughts go still, and you stay like this for a breath, basking in its simplicity. Naija's strength fills you up, and after having a few hours’ practice, you’ve become familiar with the way your spirit whispers when it’s eager to fly.

Letting her hand go, you float up effortlessly, your robes billowing in the breeze. The moment your feet touch the bridge, however, you melt into a crouch, sitting clumsily with a sigh. You could sleep for thirty moons if you thought it would erase that mural from your memory.

Nai’ja slips out an alarmed little chirp of your note before you even have a moment to relax. You lift your head. “T’vor,” she says, examining her fingers before hurriedly showing them to you. “Blood...”

You blink, taking in the red smear on her fingertips. “Ah--” Tiredly pulling your hands off the bridge, you find them red and filthy. The scabs on your hands have pulled open after all your climbing. Nai’ja stands, dusting off her cloak and grabbing your shared bag of supplies before kneeling in front of you. There’s a dark, coppery smudge on the red of her lovely robes now. 

Face hot under your mask, you murmur, “I am sorry, master,” holding your hands away. “I will tend it myself.”

“Do not apologize for my neglect,” she says, snatching your hands and bringing them back within reach. Retrieving the waterskin, she pours across your palms, dried blood staining rivers down your fingers. Her voice goes so soft you barely hear her. “A true master never lets harm come to her apprentice.”

The setting sun spills honey-orange along the sands, illuminating the bridge and Nai’ja. She turns to dig through the supplies, a strip of her neck revealed and glowing in the light. Her remorse is so sour you can taste it.

It can’t be her, commanding wyrms like the destructive ancients. Someone who so carefully mends your hands, whose name means ‘refuge’, could never be that red figure. The sun would not shine so fine and delicate on a villian.

“You saved me when I fell,” you tell her as she dabs at your wounds with soft cloth. “I will follow you up the mountain for the rest of my life so long as you guide me."

Nai’ja scoffs, turning your left hand over to inspect for any other damage. Living a life in the endless grit of the desert, you’ve learned there is nothing comparable to the warmth and softness of someone else’s touch. You wish you could stay like this forever: Nai’ja unknowingly tending to your hands with as much thorough care as you had given hers when you brought her to your father’s house. "Did you not choose me because there was no option?” she asks, wry.

You nod. “I did. I have no need or desire for any master but you.”

To this, she says nothing, though her touch is slow, thoughtful. When she is satisfied, she returns your hands carefully to your lap. You regard each other as your scarves mingle along the bridge. The breeze does feel nice, worming under your mask and cooling your face.

“May we stay the night here?” you ask, though you hadn’t meant to. Hastily, you tack on, “My legs are weary from all the... flying practice.”

A tenseness you hadn’t known you were holding eases at her breathy laugh. “I think I truly must seem graceful when standing next to you.”

You slump to one side, groaning. “You watched.”

“Of course I did,” she says, chuckling as she exchanges bandages for flint and tinder from the supply bag. “Very well. Rest, and I will start the fire.” Then she takes the steel wyrm shard used for making sparks, and points this at you in warning. “But only one night. The longer you stay, the further you’ll stray. You will at least meditate.”

You feel you have been doing that all afternoon, a hole worn in your mind from your thoughts pacing in circles. But you do not mention the altar, or how that shard in her hand leaves you unsettled. “Yes, Nai’ja,” you reply.

* * *

 

Almost another full day of travel, and it’s the first time in your life you’ve ever felt weary of sand. “How far is this city buried?” Flapping your arms, you shake sand from what feels like every fold in your robes, letting the wind take it away. Nai’ja skids through the rocky canyon as effortlessly as a glider, leaping to greet another sheer drop.

She calls from the air, “Just a bit further!” before disappearing out of view.

Again you wonder why the stars made you a j’nier-- your heart is not meant to take this kind of thrill all the time. You take a breath and hold back your wavering voice as you walk off the edge and into the ever-shifting slopes of sand. A half-dozen gliders accompany your decent, chirping and chasing you as you try to catch up to Nai’ja.

Her path is like a river, weaving through rocks and rubble with her arms spread like wings. You’re regaining your balance again as you follow her down a long corridor; it’s the longest you’ve ever seen with so many pillars intact, and the way the sun shines through them and glimmers on Nai’ja’s fluttering scarf makes your heart ache.

You’re finally gaining on her, slicing through the sand, but then your master comes to an abrupt halt. The only reason you don’t collide, you suspect, is that she has become familiar with your gracelessness, and she easily catches your arm as you pass. You yelp as she whirls you around, slowing you to a stop.

You clutch her arm while the world keeps spinning behind your eyes. “You could have warned me,” you say, breathless.

“I could have,” Nai’ja agrees, and it’s now you realize your bodies are pressed together while she steadies you. Her mask is close to yours. “The view is best as a surprise, I think.”

Taking a step back, you clear your throat. “The view?” And then you truly _look._

You’ve never seen the mountain so large, the sun shining through its split peak leaving streaks of color on your eyes. Objectively you’ve known it was your destination, but where it had only seemed like a mere thought in your mind, it’s now tangible enough to make your blood come alive. You will soon touch the earth there; you will fly into that light.

“Burn this into your heart's eye, T’vor,” says Nai’ja from beside you. “Where we go is so dark, the sun is no longer gold. It will be a long time before we will see the mountain again.”

* * *

 

 

You do not land on your face this time, though it had taken nothing less than monumental effort to manage. Nai’ja led you off what had seemed to be the broken edge of the entire world, the sky and comforting presence of the mountain all falling up and out of reach.

Growing up in the desert, the vast dunes surrounding your village had always weighted your shoulders with the awareness of how small you truly were, but here in this cavernous dark you are insignificant, the silent work of the ancients suffocating in its awe. The windless air is dreamlike, motes of dust kicked up by your feet. Great pillars reach up so far into the dark that you can not see their tops. Save for small trickles dripping in from the world above, the sands here are still.

Nai’ja’s scarf is a dead thing, hanging limp off the side of the severed beam she perches on. She watches you, expectant.

In the smooth sands before you, a fraying beam of watery light touches a lone statue, bathing it so gently it glows.

The dead beckon.

* * *

  

Its silhouette is much smaller now. The storm has quietened, and you see the figure’s cloak is torn and ragged at the hem. It waves you closer, songs ringing in your ears.

 

Listen well.

Anger blinded the ancients.

The wyrms merely struck as their masters bid.

Even with masters long dead, in darkness they still prowl.

Diligent flame, your time will yet come. Do not lose sight of the mountain.

 

You think you might be shouting as its voice becomes sharp and pointed, a knife of hymns scraping across your heart. Have you listened? Have you heeded her words?

Yes, you understand, but please, you are splitting at the seams; you are being torn in two.

Songs fill you to bursting, and still the tattered figure does not ease, branding in you her words and melody. And as you overflow, a whirlwind of hymns pouring out your eyes, you see your master.

 

Nai’ja at a fire, in a familiar canyon, her cloak a simple, empty red.

She hums something formless, a wandering tune.

“You sing like the ancients,” you say, though it is not your voice. You are mending your scarf, much longer than you’ve ever had, in patterns you’ve never touched. Nai’ja watches your movements and attempts to copy them for her own.

“How do you know?” she asks.

You look down at your body, and your robes are a pristine white, glittering with gold thread. You raise an arm, displaying a sleeve to Nai'ja in answer.

“Oh,” she says.

A laugh rolls out of your mouth, high and dancing with the stars. You reach over to her, your smaller hands covering hers and guiding her through the pattern you hadn’t known you knew. But Nai’ja, after a moment of this, turns her palms over, hesitantly working her fingers between yours.

Hushed, she murmurs, “I prefer your singing instead.”

The fire does not account for how warm your body feels. “Do you?” you reply, your fingers slowly closing, your palms binding together. You admit, “I’m rather partial to yours.”

Nai’ja leans closer, the eyes of her mask fixed on you. And then the red of her robes fades away-- as does the canyon, as do you. The campfire sparks in the dark, spitting gold like the mountain, and you hear her ask, “Which note is your name bound to, Va’shti?”

 

The songs fill your ears again, a voice piercing your spirit. You do not hear the answer so much as have it chiseled to your bones; the three hymns she gives you all begin with the note for ‘beauty’.

* * *

 

You must write them.

 

They must be made permanent.

 

Made through thread or blood, it makes no difference.

 

For if you forget these, you forget part of yourself. The songs are you.

 

You are made of hymns and light. Burning alone and diligent: a single flame in the night.

 


End file.
